Month: August 2023

Do you still Wordle?

It’s been about 18 months since Wordle began appearing on my social media feeds, those green and yellow boxes asking for an explanation. I discussed Wordle variants soon after that. While I still play Wordle daily, the variants I play has shifted. I still play Daily Quordle, and its own variant Daily Sequence, which has four words that must be solved in order. While I enjoy Octordle (8 words) and Sedecordle (16 words!), I play on my phone, so managing 8 or 16 words was cumbersome.

Among the variants I’m enjoying are Connections, another puzzle hosted by The New York Times, and Keyword, hosted by The Washington Post. Keyword looks like part of a crossword puzzle – you’re given 6 vertical words, each missing one letter lined up in a horizontal row; your goal is to find the missing word in as few guesses as possible. (A perfect score is 6 letters.) It usually has a mix of easy and hard words. For example, “?ARROT” is probably CARROT, but “RI?E” could be any number of words. When you enter the correct letter, the square turns green; a wrong answer turns it pink. Either way, it shows a count of how many guesses you’ve taken on that letter.

Connections unstarted with the words: Jack, Press, Planet, Button, Plank, Squat, Snap, Obvious, Crunch, Buckle, Nothing, Curl, Zip, Kangaroo, Lunge, Nada

Connections takes a whole different approach, presenting you with a four-by-four grid of words. Your task is to determine what the connections are between the words, correctly grouping them in sets of four. What makes this difficult is the combination of overlapping categories – there’s usually a couple words that could fit into different categories, even once you successfully identify the categories. For example, yesterday’s Connections included the word “Duds” in the Slang for Clothes category, which was also a fit for the “Failures” category.

Connections solved with categories Slang for Zero, Fastening Verbs, Gym Exercises, and Captains

As you complete each grouping, the words move into a colored box; the different colors indicate the level of difficulty. You have up to four mistakes, so you want to be careful with your selections. On the plus side, it won’t let you submit the same erroneous group of four again. Sometimes the problem I have matching the categories is a lack of context, such as MTV shows or NFL players, which are both outside the scope of my fandoms and general knowledge.

Like Wordle, both Keyword and Connections provide a handy summary of your result that can be shared with friends without revealing the answers. Which are your favorite Wordle variants?

Cats and hairballs

Living with four cats, it’s not surprising that I have to periodically deal with hairballs. None of our are considered long-haired, though Diane and June do have slightly longer fur than Arwen and Zuko. Hairballs are part of their natural process since they constantly swallow fur, June more than the rest because she frequently bathes the other cats. Rest assured, there are no photos included on this post.

With only two carpeted rooms, unless the cat is on furniture, we mostly stand back and wait for the hairball process to be finished so we can clean it up. Well, to be honest, I mostly lay in bed, listening for the general location and assessing which cat is providing the hairball. For some reason, they mostly happen in the early morning hours. This is actually preferred, since it means they’re at the furthest point in the day from having eaten and the content is not likely to include food.

The listening phase is pretty important (if I can’t see it happening) as each cat has a different hairball style. Yes, really! Zuko seems surprised, leaving just a small spot, whereas June usually has more water with hers. The more distinctive ones that I have to watch out for are Diane and Arwen. Diane always produces two spots, the second one just a smaller follow-up to the main event, usually within a couple feet. Arwen… well, she’s unique, I have never seen a cat hairball quite like her. Where the other cats stay still for the process, Arwen actively backs away from what she’s producing, almost as if saying “What is this and why is it coming out of me?”

Needless to say, this affects my morning routine. I consider my room and bathroom to be safe zones – I generally wake up to that sort of noise in my room. I don’t step foot in the hall until I’ve turned on that light and checked the floor. I flip on the spare bedroom light to check that floor, though to be fair, most of that floor is currently being used as a storage area. At the other end of the hall, I assess the few paces between the hall and dining room light switches, looking for that reflected light glistening off liquid before I turn off the hall light. Taking as few steps as possible, I turn on the dining room light. It’s not that there are hairballs that often, I just don’t like finding them with my bare feet.

Appreciating my talented friends

We attended the Bristol Renaissance Faire over the weekend, which is always delightful… once we managed to get there, after spending an hour between the highway exit and the parking. If you plan well, the food line you stand in for too long will be near a show, or near an empty stage so you can sit down and catch the next show right after you eat. (That’s how we found a new act this year.) We also caught part of a Cirque du Sewer show and found great seats for one of Dirk & Guido’s shows.

But those aren’t the talented friends I want to talk about. Not that they aren’t talented, just that I don’t actually know the performers. I want to talk about the delightful creations available at the Bast’s Garden Menagerie, around the corner from the second set of real bathrooms.

When I began attending conventions in Chicagoland, these lovely ladies were almost always present with their adjustable shoulder dragons, winged plush, and beautiful, mostly anthropomorphic, drawings. We have some of all of those in our house.

In more recent years, they began experimenting with polymer clay, creating delightful dragons and cat versions of weeping angels. Then they started playing with their food, which inspired me to sing Cthulhu Sleeps Tonight.

Until this week, I didn’t own any of their amazing food sculptures. When I saw Nessie on Instagram last week, I hoped she would still be available when we made it to their booth. Looking at the bowl, a tiny blue and white Loch Ness monster is sitting in a bowl of soup, with corn, celery, carrots, and noodles around her. Nessie and every one of those food items is handmade, down to the crinkle cuts in the carrots. The opossum on the edge of the bowl is also one of their wearable creations – a pin combining polymer clay and fake fur.

If you can’t visit Bristol or one of the other faires or conventions they attend, you can find their amazing creations on Etsy here and here during the off season. Why not take home a bowl of ramen you’ll never eat or a squid-filled cup of tea?